Scary Weekend

Lots has happened here at the Gates home since the last blog post. We've been enjoying the company of Grandma Laura, who has been very helpful with Lincoln and Lydia. And Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Mullen came for a visit for a midweek afternoon.

Lincoln and I had our first Friday Night Football outing, going to the CVCA v. Manchester game. Too bad it was the last night of regular season high school football. We had a great time. Lincoln watched some of the game, more of the band, and generally had fun just taking it all in. He leaned over to me in the second quarter and said, "There are a bunch of tubas here!" It was pretty cold, but he kept his hands in his pockets when they needed warmed up. And then we got a hot pretzel after half time.While the guys were at the football game, the ladies went clothes shopping. The first of many of these types of evenings, I'm sure.

Saturday proved to be an eventful day that we don't want to relive again. Sometime around 4:00pm Lydia was waking up from a nap when she vomited a small amount. When Jenn began changing her clothes, Lydia started crying in such a way that we hadn't heard from her before. It kept getting worse and worse, and she was breathing in such a way as though she were gasping for breath. Her color was turning from her normal skin-tone to a dusky-purple. I then took her, turned her face-down and tilted her forward. After smacking her back a few times, she was able to breathe a bit better, but she was still having trouble inhaling, and any time I stopped patting her back, she wasn't able to breathe in and her color turned back to the dusky-purple.

Jenn called 911 and the ambulance arrived in not too long. At various points during this process I was able to aspirate some mucus from the back of her mouth, but she wasn't getting much relief. I also gave her two breaths along the way, though this made me nervous because I didn't want to force whatever was causing her problem further down her throat. More than a couple of times I thought to myself, "My two week old daughter is going to die in my hands." Short prayers followed these thoughts. When the paramedics arrived, I ran her out to them and told them we'd follow the ambulance to the hospital.

The drive seemed to take a long time, but in reality, it went pretty quick. Jenn and I were scared because we had no idea what was going on in the ambulance. We honestly didn't know if she was going to live or die. When we got to Route 8 the driver turned off the lights, and we knew that Lydia was either improving nicely... or she didn't make it. We were literally driving 50 mph on the highway... I've never driven 50 mph on Rt. 8. Jenn called my parents, and we prayed most of the way to Children's Hospital.

When we arrived, the paramedics told us that they had suctioned a good bit of mucus from her, and she was breathing much more comfortably. She was understandably exhausted. Our nurse was an absolute all-star. He was calm and he provided great communication. Lydia's pulse-ox was very good, and nothing about her initial examination was abnormal. Her radiographs showed a lot of gas in her intestines, and her bloodwork was okay, they said.

We took her home around 8:30 and she's been well ever since. It was crazy for us to think that she was actually, without exaggeration, near death. We thank God for allowing a speedy recovery and no damage to Lydia.

I was disappointed that I was not able to take Lincoln Trick-Or-Treating last night. This was something that we had talked about for some time and the anticipation was building. We would have had some great photos. Jenn and I were very thankful, though, that Grandma Laura was here to take care of Lincoln and take him Trick-Or-Treating. They made it about 6 houses before Lincoln had had enough. They returned home to hand out candy to the kids in the neighborhood, and the report was that Lincoln was a champ at this. He loved seeing all of the costumes.Lincoln, Gretel and I went on a hike today to get the wiggles out. More Gretel's than Lincoln's. Lydia has been well today, probably catching up on rest.Lincoln has officially entered a whiny stage. Not all the time, but it is definitely something that we're working on. The potty training is not going well, either. He's just not telling us when he needs to go No.1. There's never an accident with No.2, but No.1... he just doesn't care. He tells us, "We'll just get dry underpants." Hmmmmm....That does it for today. Thanks for reading, and please keep Lydia in your prayers.